What does “iliuziia chystoty” mean in Ukrainian?

Ілюзія чистоти (iliuziia chystoty) is Ukrainian for illusion of cleanliness. It’s the working phrase Ukrainian chefs reach for to argue against the visible-cleanliness theatre of wearing rubber gloves in a kitchen. Iliuziia sits straight in from Latin via Polish; chystoty is the genitive of chystota (“cleanliness”), itself from the Slavic root чист- that gives us чисто and очищати.

In this Yevhen Klopotenko clip, Ukraine’s most prominent restaurant chef makes the case in plain Ukrainian: a glove that just touched your hair and then your tomato is more contaminated than a freshly washed bare hand. Gloves only earn their keep for fish, where the smell sticks to skin. Ілюзія чистоти is the rhetorical hammer that makes the lesson stick.